Checkmate in the West End
Louise Jury
07.05.09
This is London
Trafalgar Square will be transformed into a giant chess set complete with six-foot ceramic pieces for this year’s London Design Festival.
Passers-by will be invited to restage the Battle of Trafalgar in the boardgame by moving the enormous pieces around the square.
The moving sculpture, created by Spanish designer Jaime Hayó*, is the attention-grabbing centrepiece for the festival, which takes place for the seventh time in September.
Announcing details today, Ben Evans, the festival’s director, said: “By doing this in this public space, it introduces design to a much wider audience who won’t have come deliberately to see it but come across it by accident.
“Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people pass by this square in the course of a week. We wanted to try to find things that were participative for people.”
The Victoria and Albert Museum will be the main hub of the festival. Its newly-opened Sackler Centre will host shows, talks and installations.
Highlights include an exhibition of graphic design and a public-seating installation in the tunnel entrance to the V&A made from reclaimed waste.
Leading designers will take groups of visitors on tours of the V&A to point out objects of special significance to them. Although the designers have not yet been confirmed, Mr Evans said: “As an illustration, it would be fascinating to hear from Ron Arad or Terence Conran where they got their inspiration from.”
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What do they look like.